


Good Will

by Eglantine



Series: Rosaline-called-Benvolio [1]
Category: Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare, Shakespeare- Works
Genre: AU, Awesome Ladies Ficathon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-01
Updated: 2010-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the awesome ladies ficathon prompt: girl!Benvolio, "kissing cousins."</p><p>And the worst part is, she knows that if they were here to talk about it, Romeo and Mercutio still wouldn't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Will

And the worst part is, she knows that if they were here to talk about it, Romeo and Mercutio still wouldn't understand. They still wouldn't see that this is what she had been afraid of her entire life, that this is why she begged them not to fight and dogged their footsteps even when they teased and tormented her.

(And one time when they had been sneaking out at night and she had followed, Romeo had stopped her with a gentle touch on the shoulder, and then had pushed her up against the wall of the Villa Montague and kissed her oh so gently, and run his fingers down her cheek, and said, "Come on, coz-- just wait here. We'll be back soon.")

At the funeral there is a blond haired woman who she knows by sight as Lady Capulet. Benvolio goes to her because she is standing all alone, and only when she gets closer does she see the hard, pale eyes and the fierce set of the jaw that Lady Capulet's black veil masked from a distance. Benvolio remembers suddenly and unwillingly everything she had ever heard about the Capulets-- bloodthirsty, vicious, merciless, heathen-- but Lady Capulet has raised her head and met her eyes and it is too late to turn away.

"Romeo was my cousin," she says. "His parents raised me." (after mine were killed by Capulets-- no no don't even think it, you don't hold a grudge but will she? Will she know?) Lady Capulet inclines her head, as if accepting this relationship as near enough to permit commiseration in grief.

"You were close, I think. I saw you together often," Lady Capulet says (can she know he kissed her once against the wall of the villa and when he scampered away into the night the flaking painted plaster left white smudges all down her back and in her hair?).

"I wish I had known your daughter," she says, and she feels the tears that would not fall for Mercutio, for her aunt, for Romeo's deaths catch in her throat. "I never wanted this. I feared it my whole life-- I am called Benvolio but it isn't my name."

"What is your name?" Lady Capulet asks, and Benvolio cannot tell if she is humoring her or if it is genuine-- but the words won't stop.

"They called me Benvolio because one day I wouldn't join them throwing rocks at Capulets-- they meant it to tease, like it was a bad thing, that I wanted peace. That I would have stopped all the fighting, here and everywhere, if I could. I fought your nephew. I never wanted to."

"I wished your cousin dead," Lady Capulet says, almost expressionless, but Benvolio sees her eyes drift towards the tomb. "I have no joy in it now."

"I'm sorry," Benvolio says, and begins, at last, to cry in earnest. She feels a tentative hand on her shoulder and scrubs her eyes and looks up into Lady Capulet's face, and wonders when she became old enough to see how young Lady Capulet is.

"What is your name, Montague?" she asks, brushing a stray hair off of Benvolio's cheek just as her lost mother and aunt might once have done.

She speaks very soft and holds very still, afraid that a sudden movement will, like frightened birds, send Lady Capulet's thin hands flying away.

She says, "Rosaline."

(Romeo tells her he loves her and it frightens her. She persuades him to go to the party-- knows he falls in love as easily and naturally as the changes of the moon, and when he sees girls prettier than his too tall too skinny Good-Will, he will love one of them and she will not have to wonder why she hid the white-smudged dress underneath her bed and never washed the paint away.)


End file.
